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Guest Commentary: Providing better health care

By Kathleen Sebelius and Patricia Gabow

Posted:
06/22/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT

Over the years, leaders in industry have learned that doing something right often costs less than doing it wrong. Today, we'll come together in Denver to talk about how applying that same principle in health care can protect lives and save billions of dollars.

There is no doubt that America has the world's most skilled doctors and nurses and its finest hospitals. Every day, many Americans receive care that is as good as or better than any in the world. But far too often, we fall short of that high standard.

A recent study found that as many as one out of three hospital patients are harmed by the care they receive. And more than a fifth of chronically ill adults report a serious error in their care over the course of a hospital stay.

Imagine a loved one who is admitted to the hospital for a routine surgery. The surgery goes well, but as they recover, their stitches become infected or they have an allergic reaction to a medication they were not supposed to be given. A preventable complication like this can result in longer hospital stays, long-term injuries or disability, or even death.

These mistakes don't just cause pain and anguish. They also add to skyrocketing health insurance bills for families, businesses, and government at every level.

We know that these errors are not the result of a careless workforce. But good people get trapped in flawed systems. It only takes a small mistake like poor communication between providers or missing information to cause a dangerous medical error.

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The good news is that hospitals across the country are showing that delivering better care is possible.

For example, seven years ago, Denver Health took a structured approach to quality and safety that included focusing on high risk, high opportunity clinical circumstances. This helped give Denver Health the lowest overall actual-to-expected mortality rate of any academic medical center in the country, the lowest actual-to-expected mortality for trauma, and zero deaths for mothers during birth. This means last year, 231 people walked out of Denver Health who would have been expected to die at another hospital.

We can see these pockets of excellence around the country. And yet, far too many Americans still go without the best care.

That's why the Obama administration has joined with Denver Health and more than 1,500 other hospitals nationwide — along with hundreds of employers, health insurers, provider organizations, and patient advocates, to launch the Partnership for Patients — an unprecedented alliance that will promote innovations to improve hospital care and reduce wasteful spending.

We've never had so many high-level partners join together to promote patient safety. And to get started, we are setting two ambitious goals:

Over the next three years, we will reduce preventable injuries in hospitals by 40 percent, and we will cut hospital re-admissions by 20 percent. Achieving these goals could save as many as 60,000 lives and protect more than 1.6 million patients from complications that would put them back in the hospital.

If we succeed, countless Americans will have more healthy years to share with their loved ones.

Reducing preventable errors and unnecessary hospital readmissions has the potential to save as much as $50 billion over 10 years for Medicare alone. At a time when Medicare costs are expected to rise steeply over the next decade, we have to start bringing down health care costs now.

There are two ways to do that: providing less care or providing better care. Denver Health chose the second option, and its patients and their families are already experiencing the benefits of high quality, safe and efficient care.

In the coming years, the Partnership for Patients will help thousands of communities make the same choice. Together, we are sending a clear message that we will only accept a health care system in which every single American gets the best possible care.

Kathleen Sebelius is U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. Dr. Patricia Gabow is CEO of Denver Health.

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